Remote work solutions — Recent events have increased demand for solutions that enable people to work from home or remotely from anywhere across the world. Revenue from Teams helped Microsoft beat quarterly expectations for Q2 of It can exploit Teams further for long-term growth. Diversify portfolio — Offering a wider variety of services enhances stability. Microsoft recently announced that it is interested in buying Interactive Entertainment , a gaming unit owned by Warner Bros.
Gay reference controversy — Microsoft has faced many criticisms for its Xbox Live game service. Aggressive competition — Microsoft is in intense competition with Google and Apple. In June , Google enhanced its competition for remote work by adding video-call features , editing tools, and other remote work tools in Gmail to lure clients from Microsoft.
Changing preferences of consumers — People are highly attracted to the market of smartphones, notepads, and laptops. Microsoft has modest shares in these markets.
Open source projects — Like Linux OS and Open Source Office, many new open source projects have successfully entered into the market offering similar services for free. It can threaten Microsoft that offers these products at an expensive rate. Politicized contracts — Favoritism by the government undermines confidence. Anti-encryption drive — Governments and child welfare groups have been pressuring Microsoft and other tech companies to abolish customer encryption technologies that allow child exploiters to operate online with impunity.
Microsoft and other giants pledged to standardize disclosure of the culprits, but several governments and child welfare groups want more. To remain the leading software provider, Microsoft needs to work on its weak aspects and embrace opportunities. Few recommendations are given below in this regard:. Microsoft Corporation is primarily a software business that heavily relies on the popularity of the Windows operating system.
In this regard, the company has the opportunity to grow based on diversification. For example, Microsoft can diversify through new business development or mergers and acquisitions to establish operations in new markets or industries. Another opportunity is for Microsoft to innovate computer hardware products, so as to increase revenues from hardware sales. Also, Microsoft has opportunities to improve the attractiveness of its products through continuous improvement of their security features.
Thus, the opportunities shown in this area of the SWOT analysis of Microsoft indicates the need for diversification and product improvement.
The threats or external strategic factors that reduce or compromise business are considered in this area of the SWOT Analysis model. Cybercrime remains one of the major threats against computer technology businesses.
Another threat facing the company is piracy, which is especially rampant in many developing countries. Microsoft Corporation has the necessary business characteristics to remain one of the leading players in the computer hardware and software industry. The strong brand image and positive externalities are among the major contributors to such market position.
Thus, a recommendation is for Microsoft to continue enhancing its brand image. It is also recommended that the company must increase its alliances with other firms to improve positive externalities. Let's start with the easy one. If you use the word "Google" as a verb, you know how far Microsoft's own Bing search engine has to travel before it can be called a success. Bing, which also powers Yahoo and offers a fancy iPad app, often gets high marks in studies that rate the effectiveness of search engines , yet Google captures about two-thirds of U.
Microsoft rarely masks its hatred of all things Google , which makes most of its money on search advertising while investing in other products that eat into Microsoft market share, like Chrome and Android.
But with Bing, "They're so far behind, it's a long slog," says Wes Miller, a former Microsoft Windows program manager who is now research vice president at Directions on Microsoft. How do you replace Kleenex? They're going to have to keep burning money for the foreseeable future until they can come up with something that out-Googles Google.
Microsoft cares about search because of advertising revenue, and also because Google has become synonymous with the Internet in almost the same way Microsoft became synonymous with personal computers. Microsoft's response: "This is a long-term game for Bing," Microsoft said via email. The most recent comScore market share report shows that Bing is continuing to make gains in the U.
Overall, Bing increased market share by more than 50 percent since launch. The Microsoft monopoly earned itself antitrust penalties by beating Netscape into submission, but it wasn't until the rise of Mozilla's Firefox a descendant of Netscape and Google's Chrome that the monopoly would be broken. Nowadays, Microsoft loses browser share almost every single month, dropping to The discrepancy between numbers of users and amount of usage suggests that the Web's heaviest users are the ones who replace the default Internet Explorer with Firefox and Chrome.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 took steps forward in speed, the user interface, and ability to display sophisticated content like HTML5, and Microsoft is moving to a faster release schedule that brings improvements to users on a more regular basis. Perhaps just as important, Microsoft has made IE9 available only on the newest versions of Windows, arguing that creating browsers that work across all types of computers drives quality down by appealing to the lowest common denominator.
Microsoft wants you to believe that unless you buy a new version of Windows, you won't get the best browsing experience. Internet Explorer itself isn't a moneymaker for Microsoft, although it can be used to direct consumers to Microsoft's online services.
Theoretically, someone who tries out Chrome and likes it better than IE is a potential customer for other Google products, and someone who tries out Safari and likes it may become enamored with Apple. Because of the move from locally installed applications to the Web, the browser is becoming "the portal into your world," says IDC analyst Al Gillen. Microsoft's response: Microsoft declined to answer questions about Internet Explorer, but pointed to a blog post by executive Roger Capriotti , who notes that IE9 is gaining popularity among Windows 7 users and business customers.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously laughed at Apple's iPhone in , saying, "It's the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard, which means it's not a very good email machine.
We have great Windows Mobile devices in the market today. I look at that and say I like our strategy, I like it a lot. We're selling millions and millions and millions of phones a year.
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